Cooking With Kaya Ep. 3: Welcome to Noodletown!

What’s so funny? Noodles.

Hello, All!  Um, Mom, sis, I’m talking to you. Well time certainly does fly when you’re not blogging, eh?  Yes, It’s been  a year since I published my (self-annointed) masterpiece “Cooking With Kaya Ep. 2: Fried Chicken!!!” As you might recall (especially if you’ve just re-read that brilliant entry) Kaya and I made the fried chicken video (which received an unheralded 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – no need to fact check that) the week before she entered kindergarten.  Fast forward one year to the present, or the present of few weeks ago.  Once again, Kaya and I had a week and a half to hang out before she started school – this time 1st grade! And so we conspired to make another postmodern masterpiece/ recipe video for a dish that both have a deep and abiding love for: stir-fried noodles  aka chow mein.

Now I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying that noodles in whatever form (soup, pan fried, deep fried, saucy, dry) are soul food for Asians.  Its the perfect peasant food: a starch (it could be rice, wheat, buckwheat, potato, buckwheat, mung bean, semolina, etc.) in long strand form that when cooked correctly is chewy, springy, slurpy and soaks up whatever sauce or flavor surrounds it.  Marco Polo definitely knew what was up when he brought them from China and introduced them to the West.  I don’t even know if that story is really true, but it sounds good and if it is, I’d like to think it’s because Marco knew that a life without noodles was really not worth living. I know that in my own experience, whenever I’ve been traveling or in a place where noodles are not well represented, the first thing I’ll gravitate towards when I’m back on familiar ground is a big bowl of pho, pad thai, chow fun or chow mein.  One of my favorite meals as a kid was my mom’s chow mein. She’d make it with thinner Hong Kong style egg noodles with celery and pork.  Obviously they were delicious out of the wok, but we’d eat them with a dollop of Dijon mustard and a drizzle of black vinegar. I have no idea if this was a Chinese tradition, a Hong Kong mash-up or a family predilection.  All I know is it was delicious.  And so now that I’m a parent – you know circle of life and all that – I feel that is my privilege to introduce to my kids the joy of eating noodles.  That’s how culture is passed on folks.  Trust me. I was an Anthro major so that basically makes me an expert.

The go-to chow mein in our house is a Shanghai style chow mein, made with thick wheat-based noodles. We buy packages of these fresh noodles at our local 99 Ranch.  They should look something like this.

This is a package of fresh Shanghainese noodles that I actually froze so I can use at a later date.

This is the after shot of these noodles. That’s what I’m talking about! I usually eat them with a healthy spoonful of sambal and and a drizzle of black vinegar. It’s heaven in a bowl.

It’s a really simple recipe that that draws on my time working at an Asian Fusion restaurant back in the day when Asian Fusion was THE new thing, at least in the Bay Area. Yes, I’m totally dating myself since that was a long ass time ago and Asian inspired food has long since entered the mainstream. It’s also a recipe derived in part from watching my parents cook and cooking with my sis.  Shout out, Cheryl! Don’t we look hella young in those videos?

Here’s the basic recipe. As usual, because I’m not a baker, amounts are approximates.

Ingredients:
2 lbs Shanghainese noodles (fresh, uncooked)
4-6 carrots
1/2 head of red cabbage
1-2 tbsp of chopped garlic
1-2 tbsp of chopped ginger
salt to taste
white pepper to taste
1/3 cup of mushroom soy
3 tsp of sugar

Now check out this most excellent and entertaining vid to so how we do it:

 

Did you notice that unlike most of the other posts on this blog, this recipe is vegetarian? In fact, it’s so vegetarian is vegan?!?  Yup, I got you, my non animal product eating brothers and sisters!  But I’ve also got your back if you like to eat the meat.  So as a bonus, because you deserve it, I’m including the following recipe for The World’s Easiest Stir Fried Chicken. I kid you not, this will take you 15 minutes to prepare and it adds a bit of chicken protein to whatever vegetarian or vegan meal you cook up, but especially these noodles.

Case in point:

Chow mein topped with the worlds easiest stir fried chicken.

Ingredients:
1 lb boneless skinless chicken thighs cut into pieces (don’t even think about using breast meat)
1-2 tsp of sesame oil
2 tbsp of fish sauce
1-2 tbsp of soy sauce
1-2 tsp of sugar
1/4 tsp of corn starch

And here’s how I do it:

 

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Your Brain on Trump (aka How to Fry an Egg)

There comes moment in everyone’s life where you just have to take a stand. In the era of Trump, that’s not so hard.  He’s an asshole AND a dick and basically a terrible, piece of garbage human being.  So I decided, I really needed to make this public service announcement about the dangers of Trump. If you’re a Trump supporter, I’m sorry to offend and feel free to boycott this blog. Also, I know that’s probably not going to happen because because I’m pretty sure there are only three readers of this blog: me, my sis and my mom and we definitely didn’t vote for Trump.  Anyway, for those of you who grew up in the 80s in the “Just Say No” era of American Drug policy, will be familiar with the following motif.  For those who are not (I’m talking to you, millennials) prepare to have your brains blown, or fried.

Ingredients:
1 egg
butter
Tapatío hotsauce

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Cooking With Kaya (kind of) Episode 2: FRIED CHICKEN!!!

Fried chicken faces in effect.

Time flies.  The older I get, the more that’s true. It’s been over half a year since the last post, which I’ll admit is kind of standard for me (which might explain the fact that this blog has a readership of about 6.3 people).  More hard to believe, it’s been almost a decade since I started this here food blog. In that time – the posts in this blog provide documentation – Shefali and I got married, had a kid, moved from Brooklyn to Oakland, had another kid and well, continue to just live our rather ordinary lives.  One of those markers of ordinary life came couple weeks ago when Kaya started kindergarten. But before her official start,  she and I had an opportunity to hang out – quality time, just father and daughter.  So I thought, what better way to spend time together bonding then making another food video?!  Genius, right?!  Kaya, was maybe a little less enthusiastic.  I mean I’ve been subjecting her to these vids since she was a fat little baby (when we both looked a lot younger).  So, she wasn’t really feeling it, having her own thoughts and all, but I’m her dad and I can still make her do stuff, so that’s cool.  You’ll see in the video.

In any case, I wanted to make something that despite the passage of time has remained a constant in my life: fried chicken. I. Love. Fried. Chicken. It’s got to be up there in my top 5 of all time favorite foods. I will never turn down a piece of fried chicken.  It has been there for me, always. For example, when I was maybe five or six and my mom accidentally chopped the tip of her middle finger off with a cleaver when she was cutting up a roast duck. Now, I actually look back on that episode with fondness  because 1) well, it wasn’t my finger and I was napping when it happened and 2) because while my mom and my dad rushed to the emergency, finger tip packed in a cup of ice so doctors could sew it back on, my aunt and uncle took me and my sister to Kentucky Fried Chicken (before it was rebranded as KFC) where we feasted on salty, greasy goodness. Later when I was a teenager and my parents had a night out, they’d let me eat whatever I wanted and I always got a box of frozen Banquet Fried Chicken (spicy) and I’d polish off about three or four pieces in a sitting.  As an adult, I’ve been fortunate to have my horizons expanded – at least when it comes to fried chicken. From southern style (American) fried chicken to to Japanese karaage chicken, I’ve made room for all of them in my heart and stomach.  I’d say pretty much everybody around the world loves fried chicken and everybody does a version of it. In my  humble opinion, it’s all good. I’m a globalist. I admit it.

I found this vendor in a bus stop in Antigua, Guatemala.

I found this fried chicken in a market in Pai, Northern Thailand. I tried to have at least one piece of fried chicken a day there, often for breakfast.

I’m happy to say that love for chicken that is fried has been passed on to my daughter. Nature? Nurture?  Does the fried chicken come before the fried egg or vice versa? These are deep questions, I know. Welcome to my life. But I digress. One of my favorite versions is Thai style fried chicken. It’s got a lighter skin (rice flour instead of wheat flour) and the meat is often marinated beforehand (basically, brining does the same thing) so that the meat has a lot of flavor as opposed to just the skin or batter (don’t get me wrong, I love that too).  It’s also reminiscent of the fried chicken my dad used to make for us when we were kids and he was getting really into cooking.  He used bread crumbs for his coating though. Anyway this is the version I decided to make with Kaya.

Here’s the Ingredient list (amounts are approximates, as usual).

Marinade Ingredients
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/3 cup fish sauce
3-5 cloves of garlic
1 tbsp of ginger
3-4 tbsp of lemongrass
bunch of cilantro
2 1/2 tbsp of sugar

5 lbs of chicken legs (drumsticks and thighs) – you can also use little wings and drumettes)
rice flour to coat chicken pieces
oil to fry

And here’s the all important video for how we do it. Watch, learn and enjoy.

 

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Cooking With Kaya Episode 1: C and K’s Granola

Look what we made!

 

I’m a child of the 70s and 80s which makes me 1) old and 2) able to remember a time before a lot of processed and pre- packaged foods. That’s not to say that those things didn’t exist. Kraft mac n’ cheese was a much loved (if infrequent) treat as were Swanson’s chicken pot pies, hot dogs and potato chips.  But my mom, whose Chinese roots (via Hong Kong) mixed with the hippie, DIY ethos of the time made sure that most of what we ate was homemade and nutritious.  I can’t always vouch for the deliciousness.   Check out my old meatloaf post for a description of how my mom riffed on the classic American dish to varying degrees of success.  This was also the era of carob bars instead of chocolate and health-food store peanut butter made of freshly ground peanuts (and nothing else) instead of JIF or Skippy which contained a whole lot of salt and sugar and tasted how peanut butter SHOULD taste).  But looking back now, I realize how lucky we were to grow up in a house where food was something you cooked and not just retrieved from a box or heated up in the microwave.  I credit my parents with making me the eater I am today and the cook. Today all these years later, I’m proud to carry on the tradition of preparing as many home cooked meals as I can and I think it’s having an effect.  Judging by the way my kids eat, I’m happy to say they’re little chips off the old gluttonous blocks (me AND Shefali, who’s no slouch in the eating department).  I’m also seeing glimmers of a real interest in cooking.  First daughter Kaya loves to watch us cook and help out when she can. Second daughter, Mona, not yet two, lacks basic motor skills but if her man-sized appetite is any indication, she’s going to be a beast in the kitchen.  It’s fair to say that both girls have spent a good portion of their lives in the kitchen because that’s where we spend most of our time. And so it only felt natural to start making videos with them. After all, Kaya’s been part of this blog and in these videos since she was just a baby.

So for her first video where she is an active and willing participant, we decided to make something pretty easy but really good. In fact this is Kaya’s favorite for breakfast: granola.  I basically took a recipe from Alton Brown and made some of my own little tweaks (a little less salt, more oats, coconuts and almonds) and the results have been uniformly GOOD!!!  But don’t just take my word for it. Take Kaya’s.

Here are the ingredients:
3 1/2 cups rolled oats
1 cup slivered almonds
1 1/2 cups dried coconut flakes
2 tbsp chia seeds
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp brown sugar
1/4 cup + 2 tbsp maple syrup
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup of dried cranberries.

And here’s how we do it:

Continue reading

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C’s Ratatouille

C's Ratatouille

I’m not sure exactly when my mom first started making ratatouille, that rustic French stew of eggplant, zucchini and bell peppers.  Maybe it was after she took a trip to Paris, leaving me and my sister at home with our dad whose culinary expertise at that time was limited to tamale pie and mac n’ cheese with hot dogs and black olives (I’m actually getting hungry thinking about these meals).  Or, maybe it was a recipe she got from one of the Time Life Foods of the World cook books lining the shelf in our kitchen.  All I know is that at some point during my childhood, ratatouille became a regular in the meal rotation.  While I didn’t love it at first (because what child in their right mind loves eggplant?!) I grew to love it because of what it represented: autumn, rainy days and my mom’s home cooking. Also, it’s really delicious. So that scene in the Pixar movie “Ratatouille” where the food critique takes one bite of the “fancy-pants” layered ratatouille and in an instant, is transported back to his childhood  where his mom serves him her version of the dish -one of the best scenes in any movie, animated or not – had particular resonance  for me. I mean I didn’t cry or anything.  Okay, maybe I had something in my eyes that caused them to water and perhaps at the same time I found myself involuntarily emitting sob like sounds, but that’s totally normal when watching Pixar movies. Am I right?

Now as an adult, ratatouille has been a go to dish of mine for years. So far, my kids seem to like it too.  Perhaps when they’re adults they’ll eat it and think fondly back to the simple eggplant stew that I, their father, made for them.    Here’s the list of ingredients and watch the video below for how I do it.

Ingredients
1-2 lbs of eggplant
1-2 lbs of zucchini
2 red bell peppers
2 onions
5-8 cloves of garlic
salt
pepper
paprika
oregano
2-3 tbsp tomato paste
1/2 cup red wine

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